Conference reports UK’s national parks 40 years on

National Parks - Fit to Face the Future?, Westminster, London, UK, 13 Decem- ber 1989

The 40th anniversary of the National Parks and Countryside Act, which established the 10 national parks of England and Wales, was marked by this conference organized by the Countryside Commission and the national park authorities. Delegates from national and local government, a host of voluntary bodies, conserva- tionists and representatives of the many users of the parks gathered in London not so much to celebrate years of achievement as to examine whether the UK’s national parks can ?urvive the pressures of today and tomorrow.

National parks had a fine record of achievement, said Sir Derek Barber, Countryside Commission Chairman, in opening the conference, but the context in which they operate had changed a great deal. The Commis- sion had that day published a discus- sion document identifying key issues to be reviewed by an independent panel chaired by Professor Ron Ed- wards, Welsh regional chairman of the National Rivers Authority. These in- cluded environmental conservation; farming and forestry; recreation, tour- ism and access; rural housing services and employment; ‘national’ develop- ment pressures, such as those for minerals, trunk roads or military train- ing; town and country planning; fund- ing and organizational arrangements. The panel is expected to report to the Commission by the end of 1990. All these issues were then taken up by one or another of the varied platform of eight speakers, chosen to represent different, and sometimes conflicting, interests.

Successes and setbacks

Adrian Phillips, Director General of the Countryside Commission, also paid tribute to the figures who had

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brought the national parks into being. The six key features of these parks he set out as: preserving and enhancing natural beauty, to quote the words of the 1949 Act; landscape which re- corded the interplay of man and na- ture; concern with sustaining human communities as well as environmental quality (some 250 000 people live in the parks); implications for every sec- tor of the economy from the setting up of the parks; a partnership between local government and the nation as a whole; and a difference in degree, not in kind, from the rest of the country- side.

But the parks, he said, had not been cared for as well as their founders had hoped. In every one of them the wil- der areas of moor and mountain, for which the parks had been designated, had been eroded, primarily through agricultural improvement of land and through afforestation, but also through intrusions of reservoirs, pow- er lines and road schemes. Recreation pressures too had brought environ- mental problems: millions of pounds are now needed annually for repairs to landscape wear and tear. The national parks’ story had been a mix of succes- ses and setbacks, and there would be little progress in future unless we understood why. One of the fun- damental reasons, he believed, was a limited level of awareness and public support.

In sketching the issues before the national parks in the 199Os, Mr Phil- lips said that the planning system must remain at the centre of national park protection. But he asked whether the park authorities had the powers they needed to control development press- ures, and whether they would receive the support they required from central government. He thought the UK’s parks, which had attracted a lot of international interest, had a role to

play in the study of sustainable de- velopment. While conservation around the world had tended to mean protecting nature against mankind, it was now appreciated that in many places the environment was best pro- tected through managing human acti- vities so that they sustained environ- mental quality.

Sustainable use

Sustainable development (or, as he preferred to call it in this context, sustainable use) was a theme taken up by Angus Stirling, Director General of the National Trust. About one-third of the land in the Trust’s care lies in national parks, and about half of that total in the Lake District, making it the largest single landowner. Much of the land is farmed, and, as Mr Stirling pointed out, of all the recent changes in agriculture the one that carries the most serious implications for national parks is the uncertain future facing hill farmers.

The quality of landscape depends on the well-being of the rural com- munities, to which farmers belong. National park objectives such as ac- cess and recreation were more sustain- able if they had the support of these local communities and were not simp- ly grafted on. A strategy was needed to bind together the different strands of interest, taking account of local industry, rural crafts, forestry, nature conservation, roads and public trans- port, access and recreation. One vital factor he singled out was the provision of housing at prices affordable to local people, since a thriving community could not depend on the spasmodic interest of a commuter population.

Conservation, as the Trust had found, does not come cheap. A higher investment of resources, including public subsidy, was needed, especially in the uplands. A landowner, Mr Stirl- ing reminded his audience, can only be as effective as the national fiscal and planning framework will allow. He noted that the present Secretary of State for the Environment had, in his new circular, emphasized the import- ance of planning as an ‘environmental tool’, and welcomed this. He also hoped that a White Paper on the

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environment, and the review of national parks mentioned earlier, would offer further opportunities to strengthen the planning system.

He added finally that a strategy for tourism was as badly needed as a strategy for planning. Such a strategy would need to accept a number of principles: that a price has to be paid to conserve the countryside that visi- tors use, and a higher proportion must come from the user; that some con- straint must be placed on coaches and cars, based on how many visitors a given area can take; that a more im- portant role be assigned to education, information, and flexible pricing sys- tems. It was no wonder that some landowners had come to think of land- scape as a liability, but should we not see the countryside as a priceless asset?

Farming, recreation and local com- munities were subjects developed by the next three speakers. Donald Jones, who farms in the Brecon Beacons National Park, gave an elo- quent account of the problems, and the pleasures, of hill farming. FaJJfIeJS

in the parks, he thought, would always consider themselves at a disadvan- tage, but there were compensations to set against the restraints and visitor pressures. Alan Blackshaw, a moun- taineer and hillwalker both in the UK and abroad, outlined the growth of outdoor activities, the potential of the parks and the dangers from overuse of their vulnerable landscapes. John Dunning, also a farmer, with an up- land farm in Cumbria, spoke of the part to be played by the rural com- munity, its needs and what it had to offer. There were, he pointed out, indigenous industries in the parks, another reason why they could not be set aside as wilderness areas.

Conservation plans After contributions from Dr Martin Holdgate, Director of the Internation- al Union for the Conservation of Na- ture, who broadened the horizons of the conference by looking at experi- ence with environmental problems elsewhere in the world, including those of pollution; from Valerie Rus- sell, Chairman of the Council for

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National Parks, a voluntary body set up to represent supporters and users of the national parks; and from Ian Mercer, the long-serving national parks officer of Dartmoor National Park, the afternoon session closed with an address by the Rt Hon Christ- opher Patten, Secretary of State for the Environment.

The 1949 Act, said MJ Patten, had sometimes been criticized for placing too great a role on local people and the local authorities. But he was con- vinced that it was only through the wholehearted commitment of those who lived and worked in the parks that their future could be guaranteed. He had praise too for the national park authorities, for the advice ten- dered by the Countryside Commis- sion, and for the vigilance of the voluntary bodies, who had kept every- one on their toes. He had noted the revival of interest in whether further national parks should be created, which was something he wished to consider carefully. The 40th anniversary year had seen the addition of the Broads Authority to the family of national parks, showing that tailor- made solutions for areas which require special protection could be put for- ward. The future of national parks was a subject to which priority would be attached in the 1990 White Paper on the environment.

He took advantage of the occasion to tell park authorities that although the proposed mandatory national park development plans were not in the

current legislative programme, they could and should prepare park-wide local plans, which could be taken into the new system. Such plans would help him enormously in maximizing opportunities for local choice in land use planning, and he and his inspec- tors would be guided by them when dealing with applications and appeals. The need for conservation should be given great weight in policies and de- velopment control decisions affectihg the parks. The main principle would be that it was inconsistent with the aims of designation to permit the sit- ing of major industrial or commercial development in national parks. Only proven national interest and a lack of alternative sites could justify any ex- ception. In all cases the environmental effects of new proposals would be a major consideration, though it would also be appropriate to take account of the needs of the local economy.

This and other principles were brought together in a draft guidance note he was issuing for public com- ment, a revised and expanded version of Rural Enterprise and Development. This was a clear and authoritative statement of the government’s plan- ning policies for the countryside. But he wanted to emphasize that he re- mained open to suggestions for impro- ving the system to ensure the strong protection the parks must always en-

joy.

Roger Bush London, UK

Promoting compact urban growth Third Annual Growth Management Conference: Containing Urban Sprawl, Ft Lauderdale, FL, USA, 30 March 1990

The State of Florida continues to grow at a rapid rate. In order to cope with this population growth and its rami- fications, Florida has incrementally adopted since the early 1970s a com- prehensive growth management sys- tem. In spite of these efforts, grpwth has continued to outpace the state’s ability to meet the attendant demands for public facilities and services and has created a backlog of needs and

declining quality of life for the resi- dents of Florida. In 1985 the Florida legislature adopted the Growth Man- agement Act (GMA) to strengthen the comprehensive planning system, primarily by requiring the provision of public facilities concurrent with growth.

The GMA mandates the adoption of comprehensive growth manage- ment plans by all levels of government

LAND USE POLICY October 1990